September 22, 2008

Australian PM Commits Millions of Dollars on Clean Coal Institute

by ssavage

Australian PM commits millions of dollars on clean coal institute

CANBERRA, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Friday committed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a global clean coal institute and has told industry it must do more to help develop the technology.

The government will spend 100 million Australian dollars (80 million U.S. dollars) into establishing the institute for carbon capture and storage and up to 100 million Australian dollars annually.

"Australia's the world's largest coal exporting country, therefore this is core business for Australia to provide global leadership on carbon capture and storage," Rudd said in a presentation to resource and energy industry leaders at Parliament House.

He said not all players in the energy industry were pulling their weight in funding low-emission technologies.

"The truth is some are and some are not. I think what they would all recognize from our discussions last week is that they all need to do more. And they all said to us they are crying out for national and global leadership on this," Rudd said.

The institute would have the objective of helping meet a G8 commitment to have at least 20 industrial-scale carbon capture and storage projects in operation by 2020.

The technology involves capturing carbon dioxide emitted by a coal or gas fired facility and storing it underground and had the potential to capture nine billion tons of carbon by 2050. That represented about 20 percent of the total reduction needed to cap atmospheric levels at 450 parts per million, considered the threshold for dangerous climate change.